


"I have only words to play with"

by chimneysmoke (recension)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 08:18:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1104561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recension/pseuds/chimneysmoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Ginny/Harry & Ginny/?; If I tell you what you want to hear, / Will it help you to sleep well at night? / Are you sure that I'm your perfect dear, / Now just cuddle up and sleep tight."</p>
            </blockquote>





	"I have only words to play with"

**Author's Note:**

> For the _Welcome Home_ Harry Potter LJ ficathon.
> 
> Original prompt: "Ginny/Harry & Ginny/?; If I tell you what you want to hear, / Will it help you to sleep well at night? / Are you sure that I'm your perfect dear, / Now just cuddle up and sleep tight."

She lays on his chest while he reads, tucked up in the corner room of 12 Grimmauld Place in the dead of night. There's one candle lit in the room, and it's on the other side but he sees just fine and reads out the legends to her.

King Arthur and his Knights. Muggle stories she's only heard of in passing. It's one of the books Hermione's brought and leant her, but she likes the stories so much more in his voice. Calm, steady, soothing, with his heartbeat low and his comforting smell of knit and Darjeeling and something musky she assumes is the wolf in him.

 

When they're making breakfast, her mother expresses a strong recommendation that she stop bothering Remus at night. "It's really not proper, Ginny. He's not your father, for goodness' sake."

Ginny nods and says she'll stop but crosses her fingers at her side when she does it.

 

Remus runs his fingers through her hair, his lips kissing her temple as she starts to doze off against him. Night after night since her father's attack she knocks and enters, she crawls under his covers. At first he thought it was because he was most like Arthur, but the closer she cuddles the more he realizes she must know something about Lily. About how Lily was Remus' friend first, before she was James'. 

He misses her most of all.

 

Sirius tells him he shouldn't worry about it. She's only just a girl. She can't possibly know. 

Remus doesn't tell Sirius that she's stirring something within him. He's afraid of admitting it to himself. He's afraid of admitting it out loud. 

He's afraid of doing something he shouldn't.

 

Ginny's a sweet girl, but she's just a _girl,_ he tries to remind himself. _Younger than Harry._ But there's flame and there's fight in her that's untamed and wild and youthful and enthralling. 

He's afraid of the woman she'll become when she realizes the effect she has on men. 

He's afraid of the woman she'll turn into if he missteps. She's had enough trauma for any one lifetime. 

 

Remus is quick to see her paired off with Harry. Someone age-appropriate, and she'd always liked the boy. Anyone but him. 

Arthur recovers and she grows up but still she clings to him. When he stays at the Burrow, or when she stays at Grimmauld Place, she crawls into his room at midnight and he reads to her. Indulges her.Sometimes she grows bold enough to mingle her legs with his as she drifts off. They've worked through an Anthology of Muggle Mythology, and four of the thickest modern British classics before she has the courage to kiss him. 

Remus lets himself forget, for a brief moment, that this is a fifteen-year old girl and he is over four times her age. He kisses her back briefly before he pulls back strangled and ashamed, as if the wolf in him came out between moons.

"You have to go," he tells her, somewhat coldly, shaken, and she never returns to his room after that. By the next summer, he's engaged to Nymphadora and though he feels her eyes on him she never talks to him alone again.

 

Harry runs his fingers through her hair but he loses his concentration when he's reading to her. He trails off in the middle of his sentences or drifts off before her. It's an experience that's less than satisfactory but Harry also thinks it's incredibly stupid and pointless so she's proud he's trying at least.

She curls up against her husband's pajama-clad body and shuts her eyes. She imagines threadbare cardigans and the musky wolf smell of Remus. Loose, strained Darjeeling tea leaves in an infuser on the nightstand. She imagines the brush of his unshaven face against hers as she—a girl—kissed him—a man—in the hopes of a restful sleep free of nightmares.


End file.
